Aardvark: A Better Social Q&A Than Twitter

Aardvark is a neat new service that lives in your IM client and which routes any question you might have to an Aardvark user who has the right expertise to answer your query. In return, Aardvark will also send you a few questions every day that fit your profile. You then decide to either answer the question or refer it to another friend. Of course, you can also always pass if you don’t know the answer.

Aardvark will come out of its private beta during SXSW, but we have a few invites for you if you want to try it out now.

Aardvark was developed by The Mechanical Zoo, a San Francisco-based company that raised $5.25 million from August Capital and Baseline Ventures last October.

When you sign up with Aardvark, you simply add some basic information about your location, the topics you want to answer questions about, and your preferred IM client. Aardvark supports Google Talk, AIM, and Microsoft’s Live Messenger. After this, Aardvark will live in your IM client and you simply ask it whatever question you might have in plain English.